Covering Small Businesses

By Amy Eagleburger
July 17, 2008 06:58 PM

The companies grabbing headlines in daily newspapers have a familiar ring to them – US Airways, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase. While noteworthy, they aren’t the only companies out there. About 99 percent of businesses in the United States are classified as small businesses, having less than 500 employees.

Covering these small businesses will take legwork but done right, small business coverage is a major public service to other small businesses and the community at large. The coverage can be a combination of snappy columns, well-timed articles and regularly updated blogs that serve to inform other small business owners as well as their neighbors.

Jan Norman has been writing about small business for 20 years at The Orange County (Calif.) Register.  Since her column began in 1988, Norman has written five books about small businesses and blogs on the subject for the OC Register. 

She started learning about the beat by going to conferences to meet members of the small business community but now she has taken a more concentrated approach – speaking at conferences.

“If you go to an event you might be able to touch one or two people, but if you’re the speaker … then I touch everyone in the group,” Norman said.  “I can share information that other business owners have already given me … that in turn gives me more business owners to tap for future stories.”

Working for  a regional paper, her coverage includes nearly every demographic you can think of.  It makes writing with diversity easy because small businesses just are diverse, she said.

Another way Norman keeps close ties with the business community is by sending out a fax poll – now an email poll – to a number of small business owners, asking what problems they are facing or about other news.  

The responses are telling.  In 2005 when California passed a sweeping workman’s compensation law, Norman said she could ask small business owners a question about how the weather was outside and they would respond that “workman’s comp” was killing them.

Sharon McLoone, a small business blogger for The Washington Post, said she spent six months making contacts with small business owners and organizations before she typed her first blog entry.  She read every trade and small business industry publication she could find to mine for sources and discover issues.

“Another great resource is through both personal and professional acquaintances,” McLoone said.  “People like to pass on interesting stories about entrepreneurs, a store they’ve been to or a new technology they’ve heard about.”

One coverage area often missed by reporters is the impact state and national legislation can have on small business -- laws that hardly cause a ripple in the big industries.

“I think there’s a real lack of coverage of policy and legislation that could affect small firms,” McLoone said.  “Additionally, small businesses in general don’t move as a cohesive unit and don’t have deep pockets – that means they only are going to get a certain amount of attention on Capitol Hill.”

Even when she is on vacation, McLoone stops into local establishments to ask them about recent problems and successes.

One of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer’s regular business columns is “My Biggest Mistake … And How I Fixed It” written by business reporter Marcia Pledger.  The weekly column details some of the obstacles faced by local small business owners and explains how problems were fixed.

“I think the title scares people away because I think people think it has to be a huge deal and sometimes they are and sometimes it might be as simple as attire,” Pledger said.  One of the more popular series of columns was on the difficulties of working with family businesses.  One column in the series was titled “Dad, You’re Fired.”

The column, based off one of a similar name that ran in the Chicago Tribune, was a fixture on the Monday business page for five years. Since the paper’s Monday business section was cut in July, the column runs on Sundays.  A collection of the columns will be released in August. 

“It’s a very popular column but I have to work hard to find people,” Pledger said.  “I spend a lot of time networking and building relationships and begging.”

Pledger has always been a proponent of better small business coverage but it wasn’t until July that she was officially given the small business beat.  She also writes the column “Women Empowered” about women in business.

“I enjoy interviewing small business owners especially those that are so passionate about what they’re doing.  In this economy especially, it’s not easy,” Pledger said.  “I just really admire small businesses that can persevere.”

As with every other type of business story, the soured economy has provided a treasure trove of possible topics for journalists to cover.  For small businesses, any little increase in the price is a big deal.  They can’t just shrug off increases like mega companies sometimes can.

“It’s a no-brainer to go out and say, ‘How are you coping with this?’” Norman said.  “I think one of the biggest ongoing issues now is the cost of health care – how does a small company get affordable rates?”

While these companies often don’t file quarterly reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Norman said small businesses are much more open with information than the big-name corporations.

“A fair number of small business owners know their numbers so well … they can tell me down to the dime how much they’re paying each month for gasoline,” Norman said.  “They don’t say, ‘No, that’s none of your business,’ when they probably should.”

During the California electricity crisis in the early 2000s, she said small business owners were able to tell her how their monthly energy bill was affected, providing a vital quantification of the impact on the state.

No matter the city, coverage of small business is an essential public service that newspapers should be engaged in.
“Most big-money businesses were small at one point,” McLoone said.  “They just needed the right climate to grow.”

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism